Thursday, December 27, 2007

Logo #137: Bad Brains

Designed by David Lee "Dave Ratcage" Parsons - a.k.a. Mir - for the cover of Bad Brains' self-titled debut 1982 LP on ROIR, the concept of which was suggested by ROIR label boss Neil S. Cooper (June 15, 1930 - August 13, 2001). Crystallizing the feelings of a lot of people for whom wealth had yet to trickledown, it's a logo that these days could be seen at the very least as incitement to terror for those peace officers who haven't familiarized themselves with '80s hardcore punk rock apart from that one "CHiPS" episode. If you got hit with a sudden frisson of recognition on seeing this logo, you know way more about Bad Brains than do I. I never "got" reggae, although I do rather like that one reggae song where they talk about "Jah" and "rasta" and "Africa" and "ganja." Which song is that? In an ideal world, we would've had vastly more speed-reggae-dub offspring from Bad Brains' example but instead of course we got 311 and Sublime - speaking of which, am I really the only music critic who found the lyrics for Sublime's "Caress Me Down" to be vile and repellent on multiple levels?

"You hate me 'cause I got what you need / a pretty little daughter that we call Mexie / and if you wanna get beat physically / it will be over in a minute if you...when I kiss Mexie it makes me feel horny / 'cause I'm the type of lover with the sensitivity / when she kiss my neck and tickle me fancy / she give me the right kind of love on Sunday morning..."